Pennsylvania - Essays

The Walking Purchase Fraud of 1737

Elsie Hamel

(1) The record of the Europeans' first hundred years
in America is fraught with violence, chicanery, and misunderstandings
with the indigenous peoples; the shameful Walking Purchase fraud of
1737 perpetuated this phenomenon in our heritage. By the late
seventeenth century,
the era of discovery and conquest in the New World had essentially
passed
into history; the next phase focused on the expropriation of land by
white
colonists from the Indians, including Pennsylvania settlers.

(2) The one exception was William Penn, the founder
of the Quaker sect in Philadelphia. His early dealings with the
Delaware Indians reflected his respect for these natives and his
dedication to equality and fair play. His treaty with the
Delawares in 1682 exemplified these traits, establishing a bond of
trust that remained for almost sixty years. Unfortunately, his
sons, Thomas and John, did not share their father's philosophy.
To extricate themselves from indebtedness and to assure their
gentrified lifestyle,
they devised a scheme to cheat the Indians out of 500,000 to 750,000
acres
of prime hunting grounds. Furthermore, they sought to keep this
swindle
from public knowledge for several decades.

(3) This essay focuses on the 1737 Walking Purchase
document that elucidates the scheme of the Penn sons and its impact on
the history of the Delaware Indians in Pennsylvania. I'll
contrast William Penn's Quaker philosophy with the opposing views of
his sons to elucidate this
fraudulent attempt to justify the dispossession of indigenous
inhabitants
for personal gain.

(4) To fully understand this historical event, it is
expedient to explore the customs and life of the Delawares (the Lenni
Lenape) and their sachem (Indian chiefs) who were hoodwinked by the
Penn brothers and their fellow conspirators (traders, interpreters,
land speculators, and colonial officials), as well as the difference in
the meaning and use of treaties and
agreements by the Delawares and the proprietors of Pennsylvania.

William Penn – Brother Onas to the Delawares

(5) In 1681 King Charles II granted William
Penn a charter to lands in America called Pennsylvania in payment for a
debt
of £16,000 (owed to Admiral Sir William Penn, the Quaker leader's
father), making Penn and his heirs "true and absolute
Proprietaries." James Merrell
posits that every colony founder, anxious about attracting settlers,
faced
the formidable task of surmounting deep-seated fears of the wild woods,
and
none of the colonial leaders worked harder to banish these misgivings
than
Penn. To put the least appealing features of the American land
grant
into a favorable light, he called the area Penn's Wood, hoping
that sylvan would bring to prospective settlers' minds visions
of sun-dappled
groves instead of a vast wilderness filled with savages. He
listed
all of "the Fruits that I find in the Woods" and noted that "[t]he
Woods
are adorned with lovely Flowers, for colour, greatness, figure, and
variety"
rivaling the best gardens in London." Are you afraid of all those
trees
covering the land? "There is plenty for the use of man." As
for
the "Beastes of the Woods," the proprietor announced they were not
terrible
at all but rather furry or feathered natural resources, "some for Food
and
Profit, and some for Profit only" (Merrell 23-24).

(6) William Penn is exemplary, not for his Quakerism
or even for the founding of Pennsylvania, but for the manner in which
these
two endeavors were combined in his dealings with Indians. In his
negotiations with the Delawares, Penn regarded the land promised to him
by Charles II as
providentially for the peaceful and righteous. Steven Harper
notes that
these "nuances of promised land are so intricately related that when
Penn's
heirs forsook the idea that they were engaged in a holy experiment on
land
upon which construction of the New Jerusalem was not far distant, they
simultaneously
lost the impetus that motivated their father to just, pacific, and
equitable
relations with the Delawares" (6). Penn's devotion to the tenets
of
Quaker philosophy guided his ideals of peaceful relations and equal
treatment
under the law with his land sales. Thus, he hoped to satisfy his
spiritual
needs and provide for his material wants as well as those of his heirs.

(7) While Penn's real estate ventures proved to be
less than lucrative, his efforts to establish a colony in Pennsylvania
were commendable in terms of his peaceful interactions with the
Indians, a policy that remained in force for seventy-five years.
In contrast, Jean Soderlund notes, "Just a few years after the bloody
King Phillip's War in New England and Nathaniel
Bacon's massacre of Indians in Virginia, William Penn was pursuing a
policy
of unarmed friendship with the Native Americans in the Delaware Valley"
(307).

(8) Paul Wallace says that it is beneficial to go
back in time to appreciate the wise policy under which Pennsylvania
conducted
Indian relations, starting with Columbus and the first contact between
Indians
and white men that brought wonder and delight to both groups.
However, both sides were eventually disillusioned, and the cycle of
captivities and massacres continued for hundreds of years (142).
He posits that it is
difficult to place blame: the Indians were fighting to preserve their
country, and the settlers were caught up in the vast migration that
Columbus's discovery of America had initiated, although we should not
condone the crimes committed by those who cheated and murdered to wrest
lands from indigenous peoples. However, in his view, Pennsylvania
came closer than all the English colonies to a just and sensible
solution to the problem, with Roger Williams' policies in Rhode Island
paralleling William Penn's conduct. Until the middle of the
eighteenth century, Indian/European relations in Pennsylvania were
cordial for three reasons: 1) a tradition of fair and friendly dealings
introduced by the Dutch and Swedes was reinforced by William Penn; 2)
Pennsylvania had a concise and well administered Indian policy founded
on the realities of Indian and European politics that took into account
that the Iroquois were the dominant power in the Indian world and
France was Pennsylvania's potential enemy; and 3) the Quaker ideal of
the pursuit of peace was in force.

(9) George Arthur Cribbs attributes William Penn's
ideas of justice and humanity to a single Indian policy: his natural
benevolence and the principles of his sect demanded a just and friendly
treatment of
every human being. Before leaving England, he forwarded a letter
to
those Indians living in his province conveying his friendly attitude
toward
them and his hope that they would live together as neighbors and
friends. He instructed his commissioners to take great care not
to offend the natives, to seek their good will, and to let them know
that Christians had come to settle among them in friendship (5).

(10) Several factors demonstrate Penn's fair and
honest treatment of the Indians: 1) only in Pennsylvania could an
Indian
get a satisfactory legal judgment from a white man because Indian
testimony
was accepted in legal matters; 2) in matters of trade the provincial
government made a concerted effort to guard the Indians against
exploitation;
3) in treaties (for the first fifty years at least), only open and
honorable means were used to gain a point; and 4) friendly and kindly
intercourse
was encouraged (Penn learned their language and customs so that he
could
converse with them freely, as did Roger Williams.) Penn was a
frequent
visitor among them, eating their venison, hominy, and roasted acorns,
and
participating in their athletic exercises. Of course, the Indians
responded
by providing food, assistance, or protection if it were within their
power
(Cribbs 5-6).

(11) But Ray Thompson relates that William Penn's
critical attention to details in the promotion of Quaker spirituality
and fair treatment of the Indians did not prevail in his personal
financial situation. Surprisingly, he spent only three and a half
years in the New World during two brief visits to his province in the
periods October 1682 to August 1684 and from December 1699 to February
1701. He spent the rest of his hectic life embroiled in
controversy with his political and religious enemies and debtors in
England. His first son, William, Jr. (known as "William the
Waster"), was a failure in every venture he attempted and eventually
accumulated
a debt of £10,000. In 1704, his father stated, "My son is
my
greatest affliction, for his soul's and my country's and my family's
sake"
(20-21).

(12) Known as Brother Onas to the Delawares (the
Indian word for "quill"–hence "pen"), in 1682 William Penn convened a
treaty council with the Delawares at Shackamaxon near Philadelphia for
lands above the
Neshaminy Creek with the following deed:

All those lands lying and being in the province of
Pennsylvania, beginning upon a line formerly laid out from a corner spruce tree, by the
Delaware River, and from thence running along the ledge or the foot of the
mountain
west, northwest, to a corner white oak marked with a P standing
by the Indian path that leadest to an Indian town called
Playwiskey. And from thence extending westward to Neshaminy Creek, from which said
line, the said tract or tracts granted doth extend itself back into the
woods, as far as a man can go in one day and a half–and bounded on the westerly
side with the Creek called Neshaminy–or to the utmost extent of said creed
one day and a half's journey to the Delaware and thence down the several
courses
of said river to the first mentioned spruce tree. (Thompson
30)

Chief Tamanend of the Delawares presented the famous Treaty Wampum Belt
(see image gallery) to William Penn as a token of this event.
Fashioned from oyster-shell beads and leather, the wampum belt has
become a symbol of
Penn's policy of purchasing land from the Indians and living peacefully
with
them. Penn's speech to the Delawares held out great hope: "We
meet
on the broad pathway of good faith and good will; no advantage will be
taken
on either side, but all shall be open-ness and love" (see image
gallery)
(Thompson 22). Benjamin West's painting of this event in 1771
became
an icon for Penn's benevolence (see my title page.)

(13) Although he was not legally required to pay the
Indians for the grant lands in Pennsylvania, Penn and his agents
made at least seventeen purchases from the Indians living near the
lower Delaware. Most of these purchases involved narrow tracts of
land, often overlapping, but on paper, at least, some of them extended
far back into the country: two
days' travel by horse, as far as a man could go in a day and half, or
in
one case "to the utmost bounds of the said Province." Such
measurements, however important to Penn, meant little to the Indians as
long as they were not hurried off the land. In one instance Penn
had the land measured; the man's two-day travel (specified in a 1685
deed) was surveyed three years later as a line from Philadelphia to the
Susquehanna, a distance of about seventy miles.

(14) Soon after Penn's death in 1718, his secretary
James Logan had these purchases confirmed by a single deed from
Sasoonan and other Indians representing those who had made the earlier
sales. Extending north to the Lehigh Hills and from the Delaware
River to the lower Susquehanna, this deed did not actually include all
the land that might have been claimed under the earlier ones–it
certainly did not extend "to the utmost bounds" of Pennsylvania, but it
did include as much as was needed for the white settlers.

(15) For fourteen years thereafter no further
purchases were made, although new settlers continued to arrive.
Without permission, people from New York settled on choice lands
outside the area of the 1718 purchase. Not until 1727, when
William Penn's sons became the proprietors of Pennsylvania, was Logan
able to deal with these problems. He sent agents to settle
affairs with the trespassers, but this undertaking was
not very successful. To deal with this problem and because more
land
was needed for settlers, Logan urged the new proprietors to come to
America
to meet the Indians and make new purchases.

John and Thomas Penn – Perpetrators of the Walking Purchase

(16) William Penn assumed that God had promised him
Pennsylvania for the creation of a peaceful and tolerant society to
avoid the self-righteous tendencies of other colonizing ventures that
wreaked havoc on native peoples (also the reason Roger Williams founded
Rhode Island). However, his sons had a different vision of this
province. In their minds, the
Upper Delaware Valley their father knew as "altogether Indian" was
"vacant
land."

(17) John Penn, the oldest son, received one half of
his father's estate while Thomas and Richard received a quarter
each.
As the businessman for the family, Thomas came to Pennsylvania in 1732
to
appraise the wealth of the province and to attempt to exploit its
resources. John and Richard urged him to sell out enough land in
America to settle
their obligations and improve their financial situation after paying
off
their father's debts. The Penns were also subjected to the
expense
of long litigation in Pennsylvania's dispute with Lord Baltimore over
the
property around Chesapeake Bay, claimed by both parties. John and
Richard
wanted to sell Thomas their interest in the province for the sum of
£50,000 (which they considered a bargain), but Thomas did not
have the cash to take them up on their offer.

(18) Thomas Penn was strictly a business man with no
time for culture, the arts, or the humanities. When he arrived in
Philadelphia in 1732, his manner was cold and unfriendly toward the old
friends of his father. The somber citizens committee disapproved
of the fun-loving society members with whom he associated and his
flamboyant attire; he and his brothers had abandoned the Quaker faith.

(19) Soon after his arrival, Thomas Penn and the
present Governor of Pennsylvania, Patrick Gordon, called a conference
with the Iroquois Indians at "Stenton" (the home of James Logan, the
President of Council) just
north of Philadelphia. Through an interpreter, Penn told
the
Indians that he wished to carry on the good relationship and liberal
policies
of his father, Brother Onas: that the whites and Indians should live in
a
"true and perfect peace." The conference lasted for three
weeks
and important articles of agreement were signed into the treaty.
After
obtaining the goodwill of the Iroquois (who held domination over the
Delawares),
Thomas began bargaining for more land; his first purchase was a tract
of
100,000 acres between the Schuylkill River and its branches and the
branches
of the Delaware River. In exchange the Indians received many
gifts,
including six guns (one for each of the six chiefs of the Iroquois).

(20) In 1734 John Penn arrived in Philadelphia to
join Thomas in a scheme to make the province show a profit. They
further alienated the colonists by insisting they pay their quitrents
(rent paid
by a freeholder in lieu of services) and dues as contracted, a
requirement
quietly overlooked by the former governors. Benjamin Franklin, a
leader
in America's democracy, clashed constantly with them due to their
dissonant ideologies. He noted in a letter to a friend:

I am astonished to see him [Thomas Penn] thus
meanly
give up his father's character and conceived at that moment a more cordial
and thorough contempt for him than I ever before felt for any man
living– a contempt that I cannot express in words, but I believe my
countenance expressed it strongly, and that his brother [John] who was
looking at me must have observed it.

Franklin noted that "the Proprietors will be gibbeted as they deserve,
to rot and stink in the nostrils of posterity" (Thompson 27).

(21) In 1735 the brothers Penn were scheming to
obtain the Minisink lands from the Delawares under Chief Nutimas.
As they
met with the chief, they were secretly having the route of the new
"purchase" surveyed by some of the men who would later make the 65-mile
walk.

(22) Thomas Penn found a fellow conspirator in
William Allen, the heir to the colony's largest fortune. Penn was
looking
for ways to turn a shrewd business deal, and Allen admired the
appearance
of pseudo-royalty that the son of the Founder possessed -- both enjoyed
the
life of country squires. Soon after they became proprietors in
1727,
the Penns had sold 8,000 acres of prime Indian hunting grounds (in
Bucks
County just north of Philadelphia) to Allen in order to raise
cash.
Now Allen and his friends were re-selling parcels of this land to
private
individuals; since the "sales" were technically illegal, the dates of
the
original grants were omitted.

(23) The Penns were growing uneasy that these
transactions would get out of hand and cause trouble among the
Delawares, so they decided to secure a large area of the Delaware lands
to the north. Allen held title to thousands of acres of the
Delawares' best timber land above the Blue
Mountains. This hunting land was vital to the existence of these
tribes
who placed little value on "farm land" held by the white settlers that
the
Indians had sold off previously.

(24) When Governor Gordon died in 1736, James Logan
became the new governor, and the Penns found the perfect agent to
acquire more
Indian lands. Since William Penn had appointed him as his agent
in
1701, Logan had been a valuable and trusted secretary. Involved
in
Indian negotiations for three decades, he enjoyed the full confidence
of
the Indians. The Penns requested him to call a conference with
the
Delaware chiefs to discuss a mysterious deed dated 1686 that the sons
claimed
had never been fulfilled.

The Walking Purchase Fraud of 1737 -- "ye Running Walk"

(25) This sad chapter in Pennsylvania's history can be
attributed to a number of circumstances: 1) the population in
Pennsylvania had exploded from 20,000 inhabitants at the time of
William Penn's departure
in 1701 to 100,000 by 1740, and the colony needed to acquire more
territory; 2) John and Thomas Penn were encumbered with paying off
their father's debts; 3) these two sons expected to be treated as
nobility in the province whereas at home in England they were actually
part of lower middle class society.

(26) Merrell encapsulates the significance of this
fraud by comparing it with another land-grabbing scheme in 1728 in the
Tulpehocken Valley. In the 1720s the Delawares complained about
colonial encroachment on Indian lands in the area; their request for
provincial officials to stop the rapid white settlement of Delaware
land by white settlers was ignored–much to their disappointment.
The Tulpehocken event was insignificant compared to the resentment over
the so-called Walking Purchase of 1737, when William Penn's children,
John and Thomas, acquired a vast stretch of the Delaware Valley.
Brandishing a copy of the "lost" 1686 land sale agreement, they
had convinced the Delawares to go along with the idea of relinquishing
as
much land as a man could walk in a day and a half and then (ignoring
protests by Delaware observers) sent seasoned runners down a prepared
trail to cover as much ground in that span as they could. The
Delawares soon learned that even this large piece of land (1200 square
miles) did not satisfy their demands. Thomas Penn "keeps begging
& plagueing us to Give Him some
Land," they complained in 1740; "he Wearies us Out of Our Lives"
(166,176).

(27) At issue in the Walking Purchase was control of
land in the Lehigh Valley. Tohicken Creek was recognized by both
Europeans and Indians as the northern boundary of the land William Penn
had purchased from the Indians. In 1726 Secretary James
Logan privately purchased a tract of land beyond this line from the
Delaware landlord Nutimus, paying £60 for his quitclaim (transfer
of all interest in real estate, especially without a warranty of
title). A series of purchases from the Indian landlords in 1727
and 1729 alerted the Delawares that this land was a valuable
commodity. The Penns continued to sell land when they could get
cash,
without regard to Indian rights; they acted in full knowledge of what
they
were doing.

(28) Crucial to an examination of the Walking
Purchase fraud is the controversial deed of 1686. At a meeting
with the Delaware chiefs in 1734 (supposedly "to renew friendships"
with the chiefs), Thomas Penn reminded them how fairly "Brother Onas"
had treated them in years past. He then carefully mentioned
certain adjustments that should be made in those lands in Bucks County
that "lately have had some claims made upon them," although
formerly they were fully and absolutely released by the Indians living
on
those lands to his father. Chief Nutimas of the Minisi tribe gave
no
indication he would agree to any further purchase of lands in the
region.
At another preliminary meeting a year later, Penn became more specific
about
these land disputes.

(29) After a polite exchange of compliments and gifts, the
brothers
Penn produced a sheaf of old deeds signed by their father and the
Delaware
chiefs; the northern Indians did not remember the sachems who dealt
with
William Penn. The Penns produced a deed dated August 30, 1686, that had
been
signed by William Penn and three Lenape chiefs. Thomas Penn
claimed
it had never been fulfilled. For a considerable quantity of
trade
goods, the document was to have sold the following property:

...all those tracts of land lying, and being in the
Province of Pennsylvania, beginning on a line formerly laid out from a corner spruce tree,
by the Delaware
River about Makeerickiton and from thence running along the
ledge,
or floor of the mountains west, southwest, to a corner white oak marked with
the letter 'P', standing by the Indian path that leadeth to an Indian town
called Playwickey, Bucks Country, then the home of Chief Tamamend, or Tammany, who was counselor at the original Penn Treaty in 1682,
and from thence extending westward to the Neshaminy Creek from which line
the said tracts thereby granted doth extend itself back into the
woods as far as a man can go in one-day-and-a-half, and bounded on the
westerly
side
with the Creek called Neshaminy (or the most westerly branch
thereof) so far as the Branch doth extend, and from thence to a
line...(blank space)...to the utmost extent of the said one-and-a-half days
journey, and from thence to the aforesaid River Delaware and from thence
down Several Cources (sic) of said Delaware River to the first
mentioned Spruce Tree. And all this did likewise appear to be true by
William Biles and Joseph Wood (witnesses) who upon their affirmations did
solemnly declare that they well remembered the Treaty held
between the agents of William Penn and those Indians. (Thompson 35)

(30) The Penn's only appreciable income came from the purchase
money
laid down for large tracts of land, and the only open spaces large
enough to locate large tracts were located over the Indian line.
Nutimus and the other Delaware chiefs were demanding more money for the
land than the Penns could pay, so they resorted to the Treaty of 1686
regarding land north of the 1682 purchase "as far as a man could walk
in a day and a half, between the Delaware River and Neshaminy
Creek." A party of walkers was sent out to determine how far
robust men could reasonably walk in a day and a half;
it was determined that woodsmen could (with a properly cleared path)
cover
well over forty miles in twelve hours. This information was
exactly what the Penns needed; all that remained was for them to
convince the Delawares to sign the land away, a formidable task indeed.

(31) The next step was to find written records to
show the Delaware chiefs, and the best record they could find was a
copy of the 1686 deed that outlined preliminary terms for a land
transfer but with missing information about the direction and distance
of the bounds of the tract. No signatures were affixed to
the document, and there was no mention of payments made. However,
the Penns decided to outsmart the Delawares by arguing that their
ancestors had sold this land to William Penn; they would use a document
proving nothing more than preliminary plans had been drawn as "proof"
that an agreement for a walking purchase had been signed, sealed, and
paid.

(32) After many meetings and negotiations and having
seen a crudely drawn map of the territory along the upper Delaware
River, the
Indian chiefs acquiesced, "being desirous to preserve and continue the
same
Love and Friendship that had existed between Brother Onas and the
Indians,"
and ultimately they signed the release. Thomas Penn did not want
the
Delawares to comprehend the huge tract of land he wanted to wrest from
them,
so the map depicting the area was deliberately distorted to reflect a
smaller
area. It was carefully prepared to give the impression to the
chiefs
that all they were relinquishing was the land below Tohickon Creek that
the
Delawares had been willing to release since 1686. The text of the
release
is as follows:

We do acknowledge ourselves to be fully satisfied
that the above described
tracts of land were fully granted and sold by Mayhkeerickisho,
Saphoppy and Taughaughsey unto said William Penn and His Heirs. And for
a further Confirmation thereof, We, the said Manawkyhickon, Lapowinsa,
Tishcohan and Nutimas, do for ourselves and all the other Delaware Indians,
fully, clearly and Absolutely Release and forever Quit Claim unto the
said Joh Penn, Thomas Penn and Richard Penn, all our Rights, Title,
Interest and pretensions whatever of, in , or to the said Tract or Tracts of
Land, and every Part and Parcel thereof, so that neither We, or any of Us,
or our
Children shall or may at any time thereafter have Challenge,
Claim, or Demand any Right, Title, Interest or Pretentions whatever of, in
or to the said Tracts of Land, or any Part thereof, but of and from the
same shall excluded and forever Debarred. And we do further agree that
the extend of the said Tract shall e forthwith WALKED, TRAVELED or gone over by PROPER PERSONS to be appointed for the Purpose, according to the direction of the aforesaid Deed. In
witness, thereof, we have hereunto set our hands and seals at Philadelphia, the
25th
day of the month of August in the year --- according to the
English Account, one thousand, seven hundred and thirty seven.
Manawkyhickon (his mark)
Lapowinsa (his mark)
Tishcohan
(his mark)
Nutimas (his mark)
(Thompson 50)

(33) Francis Jennings notes that a comparison of the
"draught" shown to the Delawares and a map of the Delaware Valley
reveals the trick–it was a simple matter of switching labels.
What the Indians thought
to be Tohickon Creek was marked "West Branch River Delaware"; streams
appeared in a pattern the Indians recognized as the lower end of Bucks
County, but the illiterate Indians could not read the false names that
extended the
area far beyond the representation. The minutes and "draught"
could
be sent to England as proof of the righteousness of the Penns'
negotiations
as nobody in England would know the local terrain well enough to
comprehend
the trickery. Only the provincial enemies of the Penns could have
interpreted
the papers correctly, and they were not permitted to see them (37).

(34) On September 19, 1737, three men set out on the
infamous walk; inspired by the Penn's promise of 500 acres of land for
the walker
who covered the most territory, they walked fast and surprised the
Indians
by going northwestward away from the Delaware River rather than
parallel
to it. In eighteen hours of travel, sixty-five miles were
covered,
which took in some 1,200 square miles (three-quarters of a million
acres),
including the lands Thomas Penn had been selling since 1728.

(35) Indian witnesses began to complain even while
the Walk was in progress, and the Indians resentfully pegged the whole
affair as an act contrary to the agreement and therefore null and
void. Thomas Penn released a large number of patents he had been
withholding for sales "by agreement some time since made."
Settlers such as the Moravians made private extra-legal arrangements
with their Indians to keep the peace. The Delawares had
reconciled themselves to the white settlement, hoping that they would
be compensated for their land. When they received nothing, their
resentment grew. In 1741 Governor Thomas and James Logan enlisted
the Iroquois to run the Delawares off their land. Ultimately, the
Delawares chose to revenge the settlers by joining the French in their
wars against the English (the French and Indian War), although, as one
Delaware sachem told missionary John Heckewelder, "they never
would have joined the French in the Wars against the English, had they
not been so shamefully dealt with at the time" (Merrill 176).

(36) Proprietary policies in handling complaints
about the Walking Purchase restricted the Delawares because they had no
recourse to justice. Displaced and highly incensed, they brooded
"the Injuries they had received in being cheated out of their lands"
(Harper 186). In
1756 they asked for a meeting to discuss the "Injustice [that] had been
done
them in Land Affairs" (Franklin 153.) Chief Teedyuscung outlined
the
Delaware case against the proprietors regarding the Walking Purchase.

(37) In early 1756 Pennsylvania declared war on the
Delawares, and Sir William Johnson, the British colonial superintendent
of Indian affairs for the northern half of the continent, devised a
plan to subdue them diplomatically. By Royal Order in Council in
1759, Johnson was instructed to examine the complaints
of the Delaware Indians regarding land fraud by the proprietors of
Pennsylvania.
His bias against the Quakers was no secret, but the investigation was
simply
in line with his official duties, not a conspiracy against the
Delawares.
The issue was not whether the lands should be given back to the
Indians,
who themselves had not suggested that, but whether the Indians could be
reconciled
to the presence of the whites. Johnson was opposed by a group of
Quakers
(the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the
Indians)
who worked with the Pennsylvania Assembly to investigate Delaware
claims.
Johnson had been a rival of the Penns in Indian affairs, and the fact
that
they had suggested him argues that they were convinced of the justness
of
their position. Johnson's separate inquiry would be the final
proof
of the sincerity of the Penns and of the English.

(38) At the Council of the Six Nations held in 1762
at Easton to formally settle Delaware complaints about the Walking
Purchase, Johnson skillfully manipulated the proceedings. The
lengthy defense of the legality of the Walking Purchase was read; it
was a complicated web of arguments that exhaustively demonstrated that
the letter of the original deed of 1686 had not been violated by the
Walk itself but never touched upon the main point–whether the Indian
signers of the 1686 deed had ever intended to (or ever had the right
to) sell lands north of Tohiccon Creek.

(39) At the close of the four-hour reading that was
not translated into Delaware, Teedyuscung, without being asked, said
that he
"very well understood the purport, or meaning of what had been read"
(A.
Wallace 246). That he understood it is doubtful–a legal defense
in
a foreign language would be difficult enough to understand at best and
doubly
so when it was heard without access to documents. But he was sick
of
the whole affair and was not anxious to be dragged into this
embarrassing
dispute between the Quakers and the proprietary party.

(40) When Johnson asked Teedyuscung to prepare a
reply (a written copy was given to him) and to have it put into writing
(thus
affording him full opportunity to consult with his Quaker advisors),
his
reply was:

Brother, Please to hear me what I am going to
say. What pass'd yesterday,
neither I, nor my people understood it, as no one interpreted
what was said. Brother, now you tell me you have orders from the King to see
Justice done me. Brother, about five years ago, when Mr. Croghan was here, He had
orders to see Justice done to me: now I desire as he did, for He went away, and
did nothing at all. Brother, I desire you'll let me have the Writings
which were read yesterday, that I may have time to Consider of them, as We did not
understand
what was read. I told you another Thing, which was, to let me have a
Clerk, to write down
what I have to say. This is the request of Us all.
Brother, I desire all my Brethren to attend to what I say. I do not Speak this only from my
Mouth, but from my heart." (A. Wallace 247)

(41) Teedyuscung decided the forces against him were too
powerful, and he declared: "I did not come to have a Difference,
but to Settle matters upon a good Footing. I did not come to put
my hand into your Purse, or to get Cloathing. I give up the Land
to you, and the white People" (A. Wallace 249). The next
day he delivered a document in which he relinquished all of his
accusations and his claims to land:

...as to the Walk, the Proprietary-Commissioners
insist that it was reasonably performed; but We think otherwise: which Difference in opinion
may happen without either of Us being bad Men; but this is
a matter that Brethren ought not to differ about. Wherefore, being desirous of living in
peace and Friendship with our Brothers the Proprietaries, and the good People of
Pennsylvania, We bury under Ground all Controversies about Land; and are ready,
such of us as are hear, to Sign a Release for all the Lands in Dispute; and
will Endeavour to to persuade the rest of our Brethren who are concerned, to Sign
the same. (A. Wallace 249)

The Delaware Indians (Lenni Lenape) – A People Displaced by
Trickery

(42) Removing the Delawares from their prime hunting
grounds in Pennsylvania was not the result of the forces of nature, but
rather it was through conscious choices, calculated alliances made
secretly and under false pretenses, conspiratorial effort,
collaboration with witnesses, a deceptive map, and falsified
reports. Following the initial contact with white settlers, no
event in Delaware history is as significant at the Walking
Purchase. To understand this resistance, it is necessary to look
at the history of these
Native Indians.

(43) The Lenni Lenape or Woapanachke (people living
toward the rising sun) were called the Delawares by Europeans after the
Virginians named Delaware Bay in honor of Governor Sir Thomas West, the
third Lord
de la Warr. They lived in small groups of about forty
people
and foraged for food; with the exception of corn, they raised very few
agricultural foodstuffs, preferring to fish, hunt, and gather in
season. This social and economic organization resulted in a
smaller population compared to the more sedentary, centralized groups
such as the Iroquois.

(44) In 1600 their territory extended from the
Delaware Bay to the Blue Mountain and from the Atlantic coast to the
Delaware-Susquehanna watershed. Their lands included most of the
present state of Delaware, all of New Jersey south of the Raritan
River, and, in Pennsylvania, the
Delaware River drainage area south of the Blue Mountain. They
were
willing to give access, first to the Dutch and Swedes and later to the
English,
to specified lands in exchange for desirable goods (such as cloth,
axes,
beads), but they never intended to give up these lands. Land
transfers
were ambiguous; documents marked by the Delawares conveyed to all who
could
read them that they had given up, abandoned, and renounced forever
their
claim to the land. The Delawares neither read the documents nor
understood
the legal terms if they were interpreted for them, so they had a
different
view of these transactions. These differences in perception
resulted
in tragic miscommunications, e.g., the Walking Purchase.

(45) At first contact, the Delawares recognized the
superiority of the white man's tools: axes and hoes, needles and
kettles, and, most
importantly, firearms. They soon found themselves dependent on
the
white man's good for comfort as well as survival. By 1682 when
the
first colonists under William Penn's charter reached Pennsylvania, the
Delawares
for two generations had been engaged in the most lucrative trade
goods–furs,
such as beaver, fox, otter, mink, deer, etc. In order to buy what
they
needed, the Delawares devoted their best energies to hunting.
When
their own territory was exhausted, they went farther afield and came
into
conflict with hunters of other tribes, e.g., the Iroquois.

(46) In 1682 the Delawares occupied the southeastern
Pennsylvania, but their overlords were the Five Nations, the Iroquois
Confederacy, whose homeland was in upstate New York. After the
Iroquois defeated the Susquehannocks in western Pennsylvania in 1675,
they set their sights on the Delawares' land.
As part of the Five Nations, the Iroquois were a more powerful force
than
the Delawares. To obtain a better share of the fur trade, the
Iroquois
joined forces with the French against the English. At the Easton
Treaty
of 1758, the Iroquois joined forces with Pennsylvania to make peace for
the
Delawares over their heads and brought the Indian war in Pennsylvania
to
an end. Ultimately, the Delawares were removed from their lands.

(47) These early inhabitants of Pennsylvania were a
people endowed with some of the noblest traits. There were no
feudal laws
or privileges for the benefit of the few–all had equal rights to the
lands,
to the game, and to the fruits of the earth without any restriction or
limitation whatsoever. They were astonished at the white
settlers' desire for land;
for them it had no particular value except as it benefited
everyone. Thus Thomas and John Penn found it easy to take
advantage of them. Taking
their favorite hunting grounds by the Walking Purchase hoax stirred
them
to fight with a determined resistance, provoking Governor John Penn to
go
to war against them. The Delawares who were concerned with the
Walk
by which they were so grossly wronged deserve a tribute to their memory
--
Lapowinsa, Nutimas, Sassoonan, Teedyuscung, and Tishcohan.

(48) Lappowinzo was the chief
orator at the 1735 Treaty with John and Thomas Penn; he signed the
release of Delaware lands stipulated in the forged 1686
agreement. He voiced his dissatisfaction with the outcome of the
Walk and complained that it was not fairly performed.

(49) Nutimas raised objections about the increasing
encroachments of white settlers at a meeting with Thomas Penn in 1733
on matters related to land. He became the protagonist of the
Delawares who opposed acceptance of the Walking Purchase confirmation
deed. When he learned of the
results of the Walk, he attached his name to a complaint in 1740.
As
a result, when he and other Delawares went to Philadelphia in 1742 to
attend
a council with Governor Thomas, Thomas instigated an Iroquois chief to
grossly
insult the Delawares and ordered them from the lands they occupied.

(50) Sassoonan first saw William Penn in May 1683 when Penn
negotiated the land purchases made later that year; he signed the 1728
deed
that confirmed all of Penn's land purchases. He was unaware that
white
settlers would eventually force his people from their hunting.
Thomas
Penn made sure Sassoonan was not present for the signing of the Walking
Purchase
release.

(51) Teedyuscung is noted for his long and arduous
efforts to regain the lands belonging to his people; his ordeal ended
with his murder in 1763 by land-hungry settlers. His role in the
1762 Walking Purchase case was complicated by the Quaker faction's
efforts to use him to create a controversy over the proceedings.

(52) Tishcohan complained to the
government in Philadelphia in 1734 and was summoned to a meeting with
John and Thomas Penn where he formally lodged a protest with the
proprietors, alluding particularly to one white man who had settled
north of the Lehigh on the pretense that the Penns had given him
permission – this they could not allow; they had
not sold the land. The Penns evaded the issue by producing the
forged
1686 document. Tishcohan signed the release for the Walking
Purchase.

White Conspirators – Selfish Motives

(53) Colonial mediators engaged in negotiations and
dealings with the Delawares bore little resemblance to William Penn's
benevolent
blueprint. They never shed prejudices that Europeans
brought
to America; instead, they embraced the idea that getting along with the
Indians
was only a necessary step on the road to a future when those Indians
would
follow the forest into oblivion. No provincial go-between could
resist
the land fever that afflicted British America, and none could deny the
temptation
to play on the Delewares' trust to acquire more, such as George Crogan
(a
trader), Conrad Weiser (an interpreter), William Allen (a land
speculator),
and James Logan (a Pennsylvania official).

(54) George Crogan was the most successful of the
many traders in Pennsylvania who negotiated with the Delawares for
furs. Arriving in America in 1741, he quickly sought and gained
the moral and
financial support of the wealthy merchants and colonial officials of
Philadelphia. He set up trading houses in Lancaster and
into the Ohio Valley with commodities such as rum, guns, gun powder,
lead, flints, tomahawks, vermilion, blanketing, linen and calicoes,
wampum, lace, thread, ready-made clothing, knives, brass and tin
kettles, axes, traps, looking glasses, rings and silver jewelry of all
kinds in exchange for skins and furs that he sold to both colonial and
British merchants. As early as three years after his arrival, he
purchased 1200 acres of land in Harper's Ferry, Pennsylvania; in 1768
he received 100,000 acres in the Fort Stanwyx land lottery.

(55) Was his main focus on fair trade with the Indians?
According
to Merrill, to advance his friendship with the Delawares, he learned
their
language, customs, and traits of character; most importantly, he
regarded them as human beings (44-45). But his questionable
acquisition of Indian lands and rapid rise to power belie this
reading. In 1756 he was appointed
Deputy Superintendent for Indian Affairs for the Crown and served at
the
Easton Council of the Six Nations in 1762 and was instrumental in the
settlement
of the Delaware dispute about the Walking Purchase–to the detriment of
the
Delawares.

(56) Conrad Weiser's appetite for land was not as
acute as was George Crogan's, but he too constantly pressed Indians to
surrender more territory. He began his life in Pennsylvania as a
squatter in
the Delawares' Tulpehocken domain and went on to a career that earned
him
substantial grants from friendly Indians and grateful
proprietors.
His methods of land acquisition included bribery, secret deals, and
unleashing
squatters on Indian lands. The Delawares regarded him as one of
the
world's greatest thieves. In the land rush, he did not envision,
did
not work toward, did not even want a world in which Indians and
colonists
could co-exist–quite the contrary; his greatest fear was that the
Europeans
and Indians would mingle. He served as the interpreter for
the
Delawares at the Easton Council of the Six Nations in 1762 and
collaborated
with the proprietaries to make sure Teedyuscung, the Delaware
representative,
was plied with enough liquor to keep him inebriated.

(57) William Allen, a wealthy, eminent merchant in
Philadelphia, gained favor with the Penn brothers and made use of the
power this liaison gave him to select and take only those lands that
suited him. He had little regard for Indian rights and
claims. In 1727 he purchased thousands of acres of the best land
above the Blue Mountains plus one tract of five thousand acres in 1735
at the present Nazareth and three thousand acres in 1736 along the
Lehigh River in and around the present Allentown. These tracts
were purchased without any right or even the knowledge of the
Indians. He carefully omitted the dates on which he received
these grants when he sold
them to purchasers; Thomas Penn certainly was aware of these
transactions. Allen was mayor of Philadelphia in 1735, a
recorder from 1741 to 1750, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from
1750 to 1774.

(58) James Logan, a shrewd and diplomatic provincial
secretary, was the Penn family's executive in the province for much of
the first half of the eighteenth century. With the
authority vested in him,
no other single person (including William Penn himself) was more
influential in Pennsylvania land policy. Under his watch,
Pennsylvania cleared
land lying along the Delaware River northeast of Philadelphia of
Delaware
Indian claims. He made his fortune in land investments and trade
with
the Indians. He had a private financial interest in the Durham
ironworks and settlement just south of the Lehigh and by 1737 he
devised a scheme to take the forest land surrounding the ironworks from
the Delawares.
He had been the task of forging a permanent alliance between
Pennsylvania
and the powerful Six Nations, but by alienating the Delawares he was
threatening to do the province a double disservice. With a
falsified map of the 1686 purchase, he persuaded the illiterate Indian
owners that the lands
around the ironworks were included in the 1686 agreement.

(59) The chroniclers of history have portrayed these
men as good examples of valorous forefathers in America's
pre-Revolutionary
War era, but delving deeper into their goals and performances reveals a
different scenario–none of them regarded the Delawares as fellow human
beings who rightfully owned the land on which they lived.

Treaties and Agreements – White vs. Indian View

(60) Merrill notes that for treaties between Indians
and proprietaries in Pennsylvania, ultimately all paths led to a
clearing and all conversations to a council–"old and wise People" on
both sides met "in a National way by Treaties." To forge or
refurbish the chain of friendship (and when the chain broke in the
1750s), mere messengers would not suffice. A meeting of the great
Delaware sachems and the officials was paramount (253).

(61) The Indian treaty was a form of literature with no
single
author. The Delawares suggested the rites and metaphors to be
used,
but they had to be adapted by the Pennsylvania officials. Nothing
quite
like the Indian treaties exists anywhere else in the literature of the
world.
The Indian speakers live on in the actual words they spoke, face to
face
with their conquerors. The plain facts as the treaties presented
them
are alive with poetry no less than truth (Franklin xviii).

(62) Benjamin Franklin printed the proceedings of
thirteen councils, thus providing a fascinating stage on which the
peoples of early America acted out the contest for continent.
However, these minutes present a distorted view; the information on the
printed page was the result of decisions by colonists who recorded the
words spoken during a session
and then altered them for publication. Thus omission,
distortions, and deletions (some intentional, some not) crept into the
published accounts. The written record did not cover an important
part of these meetings – talks in the bushes were essential; the
Delawares believed in the harmonious feeling nurtured over days or
weeks, not on some piece of paper. The colonial record keeper
missed much of what happened.

(63) Treaty councils changed over the course of the
colonial era. Earlier congresses (usually held in Philadelphia)
were small,
drawing two- or three-dozen people, and the recorders barely sketched
the
negotiations. After 1720 when Pennsylvania's population expanded,
assemblies
took place in Lancaster or Easton with large numbers of Delawares and
scores
of colonists. Fuller written accounts of the speeches and rituals
of
the treaties were more common, but the key issues were the same–peace
and
war, trade and land.

(64) Surrounded by the powerful French and English in
the early part of the eighteenth century, the Delawares were
aware that only by remaining neutral could they survive in the face of
immensely superior numbers and wealth. Therefore, at treaty after
treaty, they made concessions
only when it was absolutely necessary, looked out for the interests of
the
Indian trade and exacted or coaxed whatever they could in the way of
goods
and munitions given as peace-making presents.

(65) The negotiators and mediators knew treaty
culture best–from the council ground at midday to an Indian camp late
at night to a governor's chambers at sunrise–and their job was to
soothe frayed nerves and short tempers to achieve friendship from
generation to generation, none of which checked colonial expansion or
erased bitter memories of past crimes. Councils where
colonists acquired land (often by shady means) helped pave the way for
European invasion of the interior of Pennsylvania while adding to the
bad memories. At the end of the colonial period, the Pennsylvania
officials and the Delawares, thoroughly disillusioned by what treaties
had wrought, were ready to give up on them. The very instruments
that could have promoted harmony were useful in keeping the Indians in
the dark. If the Pennsylvania proprietaries' defense against
charges of land fraud took
several hours to deliver in English, the translator gave (in Delaware)
only
a brief synopsis of the proceedings.

(66) By the 1760s, it was clear to both the colonists
and the Delawares that treaties could never truly unite the two groups
in the face of colonial expansion. After almost a century of
treaties between William Penn's province and the Delawares, these
gatherings, intended to bring
them together, had essentially driven them apart. Understanding
had
ended in hatred. After 1750, the Delawares were fully aware
that
treaties had been the means for colonists to acquire Indian
lands–without the promised peace.

(67) Negotiators George Crogan and Conrad Weiser were
less in demand as go-betweens by the 1770s; both men were disgusted by
and disdainful of the Delawares. Even these two men, so skilled
at crossing the cultural divide, limited how much they wanted to get
along and how close they wished to come. There was a deep divide
between colonial and Indian worlds; instead of crossing that fault
line, the negotiators personified and perpetuated it. It is no
wonder the treaty culture failed.

Conclusions

(68) The Walking Purchase fraud of 1737 is one of
many attempts to justify the dispossession of indigenous peoples,
beginning with the Roman Catholic church documents that sanctioned the
Christian Crusades and continuing through Columbus's discovery of the
New World and the colonial conquests in the New World.

(69) Why was this event hidden for many years?
The answer is revealing: American historians have attempted to keep a
low profile on the Walking Purchase because it was one of the most
sordid pages in the records of Indian-white settle relations–more so
due to the involvement of the Founder of Pennsylvania's sons. The
Delawares complained about
the injustice of the Walking Purchase even before the completion of the
walk, but they were totally ignored. In 1742 while the
dispossessed and insulted Delawares sought justice for the loss of
their lands, Pennsylvania officials worked to shade, twist, and finally
bury the realities of the Walking Purchase. In the beginning, it
appeared to be only a small affair that lay chiefly between
the Proprietaries of Pennsylvania and the Delawares, but in 1762 the
incident
became public knowledge when the Assembly of Pennsylvania (through
their
agent, Benjamin Franklin) brought the affair to the British Crown for
investigation.

(70) For the next century, little attention was paid
to this event until the Penn papers and memorabilia were given to the
Historical Society of Pennsylvania in 1867. William
J. Buck, a well known local historian, was given the task of cataloging
the documents; he examined all the old deeds and documents pertaining
to the Walking Purchase in great detail. Curious as to why the
Penn family papers were so
long withheld from the public, he noted that the records of Thomas Penn
were
missing from July 2, 1736 to November1738. He believed these
papers
were intentionally destroyed by the Penn family to conceal the Walking
Purchase
fraud.

(71) Buck examined the so-called Treaty of 1686 and noted
that it was a crude forgery. Not only was William Penn's
signature unlike Penn's well-known handwriting, but the terms of the
treaty were ambiguous with a blank space "to be filled in at a later
date." Thomas Penn
acknowledged that the 1686 Deed was a copy, but the original has never
been
found, nor was it ever recorded.

(72) The consensus of historians through the first
two centuries after the Walking Purchase occurred has been that the
Delawares were passive victims, but more recent accounts show that they
were active participants who influenced, shaped, and forged their
destinies. Indeed they were conscious of the Walking Purchase
fraud and complained about it from their first knowledge of it.
Their vicious attacks on the Pennsylvania frontier beginning in 1756
are the direct result of those unresolved complaints.

General Bibliography

Buck, William J. History of the Indian Walk.
Printed for the Author, 1886.